Silent march in France to protest police killing of driver

Police officers watch a car burning in Nantes, western France, Tuesday July 3, 2018. French authorities called for calm in France's western city of Nantes after scuffles with police broke out overnight, after police shot at a young driver who was trying to avoid a control.Franck Dubray / AP

PARIS — Hundreds of people marched silently Thursday in France’s western city of Nantes to protest the fatal police shooting of a driver who was apparently trying to avoid an identity check — a march that came after two nights of violence rocked the city.

Residents laid flowers near the place where the 22-year-old driver was killed.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, speaking from Nantes on Thursday morning, expressed his “firmest condemnation” of the violence and vowed full transparency in the investigation into the circumstances of the driver’s death on Tuesday.

Authorities say the driver, who died from a single bullet wound, had been sought by police under a year-old arrest warrant for an alleged robbery south of Paris. They said he had given police a false identity when stopped in Nantes.

The policeman who fired the fatal shot has been detained for questioning, French media quoted the city’s prosecutor as saying.

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